2015 Report: 5 lakh accidents, 1.46 lakh deaths

This is a discussion on 2015 Report: 5 lakh accidents, 1.46 lakh deaths within Street Experiences, part of the Buckle Up category; Well the death toll is huge! While we wait for the government, police, lorry guy, taxi guy etc to do ...

Well the death toll is huge! While we wait for the government, police, lorry guy, taxi guy etc to do their bit, what can we do? Buckle up & Slow Down! I personally believe a major factor in serious four wheeler accidents on high ways is the unwillingness to slow down based on the visibility of the road ahead. You might go fast on arrow straight roads with no traffic during day light. But trying to do the same high speeds when a curve comes up ahead or an intersection with a village road or at high traffic or at night is dangerous.

India has the 2nd largest population in the world, so the number of deaths will obviously be very high. To determine how safe or unsafe Indian roads are, we need to look at a metric called traffic deaths per 100,000 population. This is how the picture looks (2010 data) -

Inference:

- Most developed countries are green (indicating good road safety) while developing countries are in yellow. One can infer that infrastructure has a very important role to play in road safety.

Sixty percent of passenger cars produced in 2008 will use natural gas as fuel or will be dual-fuel, and the remaining 40 percent will run on regular gasoline (2008). Some problems faced by the industry are slow deliveries of cars, lack of after sales services and low quality in the production of some cars.[27] Car production in Iran has increased 445% between 1998 and 2008.[1] Because of sanctions on spare parts by France's Peugeot and Renault, car production in Iran dropped by as much as 40% in 2012 before recovering somewhat in 2014 following the Geneva interim agreement.[28] In 2014, Iranian car companies produced 1,090,846 cars and commercial vehicles, of which 925,975 were cars and 164,871 were other vehicles.[29]
More than half of the vehicles in Iran are over 25 years old (2007).[26] The government has sought to upgrade the local fleet and the authorities aim to pull some 200,000 outmoded vehicles off the road each year, underpinning demand.[9] According to estimates the demand stood at 1.5 million vehicles in 2007, which could not be met by the local producers.[30] Auto manufacturing industry's share in gross national product is two percent and Iran's auto production rate in the global markets is 1.7 percent (2008).[31] Previously buyers had been purchasing vehicles outright in cash, but now over half of all new car sales are through finance companies or on lease purchase schemes.[32]

Thank you for this useful post. An eye opener and a good job by GoI. Like with all stats, take these figures with a pinch of salt. I am sure there are many more accidents that go unreported. A factor of two also seems less. Its very scary indeed.

The statistics are scary indeed!.
As an orthopaedic surgeon I see enough and more of casualties from RTAs. The impact of an accident, on the patient and family is tremendous. As I see it a few things can go a long way in improving the situation:
1. Licensing should be more strict.
2. Sensitisation programmes through compulsory video viewing showing the sequelae of accidents, for all license aspirants. This can include images of accidents, victims in hospitals and the physical after effects of an accident. I am sure this will make an impact.
3. More education regarding safe and defensive driving.
4. Stricter policing, no nonsense, implementation of the rules.
5. Obviously these measures have to go hand in hand with an improved infrastructure, better road signs and markings, proper standardised speed breakers, potholes need addressing.
6. Pedestrian education and awareness.
7. Certain highways and roads should be off limits for autorickshaw, smaller tempo, bicycles and carts etc of any kind.
8. Zero tolerance for drunken driving and drug use.
9. Heavy fines for breaking the rules.

laton ke bhoot baton se nahin mante

I am ever hopeful that we will get to see these positive changes in our lifetimes.

The statistics are mind bending.
However, I seriously doubt anything will be done here.
We Indians are mostly bad drivers.

To bring us in line, we will need
1. Millions of CCTV, speed cameras & monitoring equipment spread across every road of the country.
2. Crores of fines would need to be issued from the above Camera & monitoring stations.
3. Thousands of staff to collect the fines and enforce the rules.
4. Will power of the government to carry out drastic steps like above.

So, the question really is, will the Govt. take drastic steps like above? Not likely.

For the ruling class, the vote bank is far more important than hand full of human lives.

As an example,take a look at the road safety bill, the vehicle Safety regulations, the proposal to do away with RTOs and Remove tax on other state vehicles. None of the bills/proposals have been passed yet. Many have not yet been tabled also.

There is no option for the common man, other than to take his safety in his owns hands, and drive as carefully as possible in the 'safest' vehicle he can afford.

It is rather unfortunate that we are still struggling with Road Safety which with a little discipline on every ones part (all road users - driver, passengers, pedestrians, traffic police, town planners, etc.) could have been sorted out.

Also banning cars from cities is becoming the new trend in Europe nowadays. London has a 'congestion charge' from entering the city during peak hours. Hamburg has already announced a vision to ban motorized vehicles all together by 2035 http://www.bbc.com/future/story/2014...ly-go-car-free

Considering the rising number of fatalities due to road accidents in India, the government had constituted a Group of Ministers (GoM) to guide reforms for the road transport sector. After its third meeting on 12 June the GoM released the following recommendations:

1. What makes the original post really, really, really depressing is that the sources for accident data seem to be based on reported accidents. For example, one source in the report is - Source: Information supplied by States/UTs (Police Departments).

How about the accidents- from minor bumps to broken windows, broken limbs that never actually make it to that stage? For example, a friend's stationary car was badly rear ended by another vehicle (Rs 20k damage) and occupants of both cars were bruised and one had a broken arm. After hours of shouting and argument, both parties went their way, because (their opinion) involving the cops was a worse alternative.

In my opinion the actually number of accidents in India are 5 maybe even 10 times the reported number. So the news is worse that it seems, actually.

2. Of all the multiple infringements I see on Indian roads, the one that gets my blood boiling is people driving the opposite way. The sheer arrogance, carelessness for life, callous behaviour, contempt for the rules and the rest of us, and utter self entitled stupidity shown by drivers who do that is making me angry even as I write it.

I can't think of many road infractions that are worse than this. How much at risk does a driver of this nature put everyone else? If I had my way - and this may not be all enforceable- but the first infraction of that nature in the city would mean a driving license ban for a year, a second infraction within 2 years would mean a lifetime ban plus criminal charges for attempted manslaughter. On the highway, it should be an immediate 6 month jail sentence- no exceptions, even if your relative is dying of a heart attack and you need to take them to a hospital.

I left India around 2001 and don't recall this driving behaviour before then- at least not the epidemic it seems to have become after I came back in 2013. In fact it's a good job that I'm not a dictator- I would seriously consider hanging repeat offenders by the roadside for this one. No kidding.

Road accidents are also a by-product of poorly designed roads and intersections, poor road manners and overall apathy by the administration to really address the issue.

I currently live in a country (Oman) which was ranked No 1 in road fatalities in ratio with the overall opulation. The administration really took it upon themelves to implemnet road safety by having radars in all most all the place. Signal jump lands you in jail. Period.

Talk on phone while driving. Jail.

Simply enforcing the rules and simple safety measures have made the roads so much more safer.

Granted that they had large number of accidents after they started the well designed and engineered roads.

The point I am trying to make is, a large scale and multi prog approach, something like what was done for eradication of polio has to be implemented for it to be effective.

99% of resident of India thinks, road safety is like discussing 'disneyland'.

I am not going through any report or any statistics, what is better than my 15 years of driving on Indian roads? On my daily driving to work, most of the traffic offenders are the white collared highly educated IT folks who are frequent tourers of developed countries and majority of bloggers. For them it is you who should follow the rule, I am the one of instance, always.

Few of the psychology of Indian road users:

I am the BOSS, who are you to tell me which is right of way

My favorite movie hero rode bike like this in so and so movie, I must follow him to impress girls

I am only going for a small distance

I drive slow / I am a self certified good driver / I have 'ashirbad' of some baba / god / almighty, nothing will happen to me

I am driving / riding even before your father have born, are you going to teach me how to drive?

Traffic rules are for uncles / ladies / idiots to follow, we are heroes

Give some buck to the police, he will let you go

I drive like this and I think this is the right way of driving

There is less traffic on road at this time / no policeman at this hour etc

The list will go on and may beat any encyclopedia.

And the time we, the follower of rules do break traffic rule:

There is this red signal, but no one is stopping. If I break and stop, the mini truck galloping behind me at high speed would have no way to stop and run over me. My life is more precious and if I can keep it by jumping that signal that every one else is doing, I will do that. Even murder for self defense is not a crime

I am bruising the ego of a fellow mad man that the law deemed fit to drive. He want s me to move away so that he can break the signal, else I may find myself threatened. I still remember, 15 years ago, when my Dad was waiting at a signal, that made a tempo driver mad and he banged his car from all four sides. Thanks to all our stars, he was unharmed.

These things are so inbreed to our blood that, any amount of fine / policing / cameras or even govt effort cant get it stopped, the whole system needs a overhaul.

Unfortunately we are a big country with a lot of people, we can't change that.

Where there is no road to a village, people are bound to use the NH that is passing near to it.
The poor truck driver cant help if his under power aging truck can not take the overload he had on a inclined road.
The pedestrian who has to catch the BRT bus in the middle of a busy road with no foot over bridge / under pass has to jump on the busy road and do chicken run.

The thing is jugaad cant work here not any more.

Change the driving license process, give a dead line to all license holder to reappear. After that, all old license would be invalid.

Make the process online and transparent, keep video evidence of the driving test, use that to educate failing drivers to understand their mistakes.

Make authorized driving school to issue license, make them a party in any accident / law breaking involving the licensee from their school. This will reduce load from RTOs and reduce hawkers.

Strict implementation of law, introduction of credit system to license and use those credit system to determine insurance fee and other taxes etc; i.e. if you are a serial offender you have to pay a lot more for your insurance and taxes.

Implementation of law should be to reduce offense, rather than to meet / exceeds target. Make the top traffic cop a party of his city traffic offense, lower the offense, higher his performance

Make road safety a school curricula

Use brain when designing a new infrastructure or modifying existing

Vehicle fitness check should be done with certain interval, lets say every 5 year

Traffic police in Kolkata is more active nowadays, lot of cameras have been installed to record traffic violations. Hawkers have been moved from several roads. Now, major roads have the divider. Several roads have been widened.

However, several problems are also there. Roads in the sub-urban areas are very loosely regulated. In these areas you won't fond any camera or a single traffic sergeant. Roads are regulated by home guards and constables (they don't have the power to change a fine). Auto rickshaw, cycle rickshaw and bi-cycles are a burning problem here. They don't care any kind of road manner. They make the driving experience horrible in Kolkata. Pedestrians are highly irresponsible. They don't bother any traffic signal. Bickers don't respect the cars (even bus); they make their own ways. Percentage of road is very low. Most of the roads are very narrow, and number of cars are increasing everyday. God knows the future.

I have a report for only three years, shown in the graphs. Although the data are from 2007-2009, one can understand the severity. The pedestrian are the most vulnerable group among the road users. They hold a large share of all fatal and non-fatal cases. It may be be because of their disrespect to traffic rules.

In case of car accidents, major contributing factors are speeding (46.6 per cent) and careless driving (48.7 per cent).